His polls speak in immigrants' languages

Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, November 20, 2003

Now that two out of five Californians speak a language other than English at home, the only way to get an accurate picture of public opinion in the state is to conduct polls in multiple languages, according to Sergio Bendixen, the nation's leading Spanish-language pollster.

Bendixen, who is based in Miami, spoke at the New California Media Expo Wednesday in San Francisco on the impact of ethnic media on California's swing voters. On Monday, he told an audience convened by the University of Southern California's Institute for Justice and Journalism that politicians, academics and the press can't adequately address a group's needs without first understanding their issues.

"The opinions of immigrants, of ethnic groups, of people who don't speak much English, are valuable," he said. "We can learn quite a bit from them."

Bendixen, who was born in Peru but raised in the United States from the age of 12, got involved in politics by working on the presidential campaigns of Democrats George McGovern and Jimmy Carter, then managing California Sen. Alan Cranston's presidential bid. He also spent eight years on the staff of Florida Rep. William Lehman.

Bendixen, 54, started his career in public opinion research by doing pre- election polls in Latin American countries for the fledgling Spanish-language television networks in the United States in the late 1980s. He then launched Bendixen and Associates to assess Latino public opinion on a wide range of topics -- from attitudes toward U.S. political parties to immigrants sending money to relatives back in their home countries.

In 2000, New California Media director Sandy Close asked Bendixen to poll Californians about their reliance on ethnic media.

"She asked, 'Is it possible to do polling in 12 languages?' I said, 'No, forget about it,' " he said.

But Bendixen rose to the challenge and developed a method that he considers "not perfect but fairly accurate," hiring bilingual interviewers and translating questionnaires into everything from Hmong to Pashto.

A subsequent poll on attitudes toward the war in Iraq found that while the mainstream, English-language press was reporting Americans felt triumphant about toppling Saddam Hussein, immigrants were warning that the United States would lose its international credibility if weapons of mass destruction were not found.

"This is an incredible resource for bringing people into the electoral process," said Close. "We're giving people a sense of inclusion."

Bendixen's focus continues to be on Latino Americans.

U.S.-born Hispanics are much more liberal on social issues, such as abortion and gay rights, said Bendixen. Immigrants, meanwhile, though they are lower on the socio-economic ladder, are a lot more entrepreneurial, while their U.S.-born counterparts tend to favor subsidies and government intervention more strongly, he said.

But both groups are united in their support for the rights of immigrants, he said, and react strongly to what they perceive as the scapegoating of the country's most recent arrivals.

"Pete Wilson united Hispanics like no one else," he said of the former California governor's campaign for a ballot measure that would have barred undocumented immigrants from access to public benefits such as education and health care. "When the whole (Proposition) 187 thing got started, people began saying, 'What can we do? How do we become citizens? How do we vote?' It was just remarkable."

But Latino voters in California seem to be drifting away from the loyal support for Democrats that emerged a decade ago, Bendixen said.

"The recall election showed that those days may be numbered," he said. "In the recall, 40 percent of Latinos voted for either Schwarzenegger or McClintock. The door is open for Republicans."